Eleanor Beardsley

NPRN/A

Eleanor Beardsley began reporting from France for NPR in June 2004, following all aspects of French society, politics, economics, culture and gastronomy.

Beardsley has covered both 2007 and 2012 French presidential elections as well as the Arab Spring in Tunisia, where she witnessed the overthrow of the autocratic President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. She reported on the riots in French suburbs in 2005 and the massive student demonstrations in 2006. Beardsley has followed the Tour de France cycling race and been back to her old stomping ground — Kosovo — to report for NPR on three separate occasions.

Prior to moving to Paris, Beardsley worked for three years with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. She also worked as a television producer for French broadcaster TF1 in Washington, DC and as a staff assistant to Senator Strom Thurmond.

Reporting from France for Beardsley is the fulfillment of a lifelong passion for the French language and culture. At the age of 10 she began learning French by reading the Asterix The Gaul comic book series with her father.

While she came to the field of radio journalism relatively late in her career, Beardsley says her varied background, studies and travels prepared her for the job as well as any journalism school. "I love reporting on the French because there are so many stereotypes about them that exist in America," she says. "Sometimes it's fun to dispel the false notions and show a different side of the French. And sometimes the old stereotypes do hold up. But whether Americans love or hate France and the French, they're always interested!"

A native of South Carolina, Beardsley has a Bachelor of Arts in European history and French from Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and a Masters Degree in International Business from the University of South Carolina.

Beardsley is interested in politics, travel and observing foreign cultures. Her favorite cities are Paris and Istanbul.

NPR Paris correspondent Eleanor Beardsley was on assignment in Calais, France, and sends this postcard about conditions at the migrant camp known as "The Jungle."

The Jungle, that squalid camp where migrants live in the rough in the dunes of Calais, has transformed. I was there about five months ago, and I found it a sad, scary place. Since then, the makeshift camp's numbers have tripled to about 6,000 people, and I expected to find even more misery.

Riad Sattouf is half-Syrian and half-French and grew up in the Middle East in the late 1970s and 1980s. He lives in France now, but tapped into his youth for his graphic novel, The Arab of the Future, that explores life under Arab dictatorships a generation ago.

His book is already a best-seller in France and is coming out in English in the U.S. this month. I met the cartoonist at his Paris publisher with a copy of the English edition of his book under my arm. It's his first glimpse of it and he's thrilled.

The Frankfurt Auto Show is a car lover's paradise. You're plunged into a world of gleaming new cars and cutting edge technology. You'd think it would be the perfect place to get the scoop on the Volkswagen scandal.

But no one working for Volkswagen, Porsche or Audi will talk about it all. Still, regular Germans are ready to open up. Michael Kornath says his VW car happens to be one of the 8 million vehicles with the emissions evading device attached to its diesel motor.

"And I talked with them, 'What shall I do now?' " he says, "And they say wait."